Melee Combat Feedback Post 7/30 Livestream

We have not received permission from Dreoh to share the quoted post.

There's also a huge difference between weight in kinematics and weight in impact.

Animators often create weight in impact by stopping the animation at the specific impact point for a few frames, usually 3-5 depending on the speed of the game. Then shorten the recovery animation frames by the same 3-5.

When you miss, it plays out the other way. The point where it would have hit, plays faster, the end recovery is slower. It's a pretty trivial trick, but like many others in the industry, it works better than anything else, often by a fairly large margin. An easy test is to watch a game's combat videos with the sound muted. If you are a gamer generally you may still be able to 'hear' the impacts mentally if this is being done.

When your weapon hits multiple enemies in one swing, you still just stutter or stagger the frames on first impact, and the human eye can't follow it usually. People like me might notice, but I haven't met anyone who dislikes that either.

Without that part of the animation right now, weight of impact will feel weird, but if we're talking about weight in kinematics, the 'problem' @Teyloune is having is almost certainly related to the literal disjoint of upper and lower body.

Interestingly, New World (from what I've seen) seems to be inconsistent with the technique mentioned? How strange... probably just me.

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True, but that's because it is early and games of all genres tend to look 'generic' and 'do the basics' early. Also, Siege isn't really a good focus since its like, something that happens once a week at best (if you try to attend every Node Siege and so on). It's large and complex, so even in the video you showed, the player basically never needed to melee, and few others did either.

Basically, since this is a question of 'what is good for melee', it's less relevant. Things would be different once we got Fighter class, Weapon Skills, and a general balance pass on damage to account for the addition of those things.

That video might as well have been called "Mage Wars" for the most part.

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I definitely don't think that Ashes has to be like a traditional MMORPG in most ways. The framework and Steven's creative vision allow for a lot of things, many of which you can just 'work backward from things he said' to know how to make them work. Ashes is born from a Tabletop GM's mind.

But the combat is the hard part because it seems less likely that he has 'a very specific vision of MMO combat'. The sort of person that thinks about that in detail (people like myself, or their Lead Combat Designer) is probably trying moreso to 'figure out what people would enjoy' than 'right, let's build this exact thing, and the players will like it!'

Steven probably has similar feelings. "I just want people to enjoy the combat relative to the game's flow".

So if most people want a more traditional MMORPG, that's likely to happen if the innovative stuff gets in the way of it, or upsets those people. The real question is how much innovative stuff you can get into the combat system before people start complaining that it's either too hard, not intuitive, or not enjoyable for them for some other reason.

They can definitely push the limits a bit.

As for 'posting ideas and being specific'... I am way way (possibly way too far) already on that path...

Would you like to give your feedback on some combo systems ?

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Thanks to this being brought up, both now and a few days ago, I was alerted to the fact that I should look over Naraka's gameplay.

I wanted to use it as an example of exactly what we've been talking about, so I'm glad that you've done so (I've been overdoing it a bit lately).

It's a much clearer comparison to most of what Ashes of Creation: Apocalypse was like, so it's generally a better comparison.

If you're concerned about the way you presented your thoughts, it was entirely clear to me, but maybe only because I agree with it so much. I don't think anyone at Intrepid will have any difficulty understanding any aspects of your feedback.

I still haven't had time to get a proper in-depth look at Naraka, from the perspective of 'figuring out all the things that would map well to an MMO that chose to use similar timings and ranges', so if you have either played the game or watched a lot of it, my question is how you feel about the differences between weapons.

This video's really great for showing everything though, perfect length too.

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The issue I see is that I haven't seen a lot of 'side attacks' in Naraka, mostly just forward attacks and sideways evades. This works for 1v1 games without a lot of 'magic', but not for Ashes. This is probably not an issue in feedback terms, since, again, no one has actually argued overall that 'only forward' should be a thing, but...

Just noting it because if it turns out that Naraka only has 'forward' style attacks, and one says 'Look to this' as a generality, the community has already (probably rightly) said a big 'no' to the way it works. Again, I didn't watch enough to be sure, but, best not to risk a more negative reaction than necessary, especially since one seems to need to watch enough to be sure, bringing us back to Dreoh's point of 'you watched X amount and decided you didn't like it'.

Whether or not it's valid to do that can also depend heavily on what one watches...

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When I run the 'numbers' this doesn't work for Ashes, because in games like Naraka, part of the reason for combos and the combo system has to do with the way a body 'realistically' can achieve certain strikes.

So let's just assume that regular melee in Ashes shouldn't have stagger/hitstop. This isn't entirely unrealistic beyond 'fantasy world levels of combatant'. You don't always lose your balance when someone hits you with the equivalent of a quick punch, which 'normal swing of a big axe' probably is, to the adventurers of Verra.

I think that no matter how much effort they put into the Hybrid Combat, affording the balance nightmare that stagger would cause, is too much. Just the animation tricks and hit-sparks on the attacker side will probably be enough.

Thanks for the data, I haven't actually seen any Greatsword videos yet, just the little bit from the video you had in your post.

I also just realized that I didn't note why 'sidestep' and 'side-strike' are different and usually need to be different. Sidestep feels natural when it is fast, cancelable, and short distance. In most games, a wide sweeping attack still hits you. Ashes is probably going to have a lot of those.

Side-strike is slower, moves further, and the opponent's goal is to hit you at the end, not at the beginning. The character can spend more time getting fairly far out of the way, or using it to cut off opponent movement. It is a better dodge while still feeling 'realistic'.

Basically, sidesteps make people want cancels and iFrames because they feel like they should have them. Side-strikes at least can be understood as 'this is meant to move far and that's how you dodge', while leaving the 'slight adjustments' part. Also makes people spam less.

New games live or die by how easily they communicate to players what works and why, and sometimes that means 'discouraging them from spamming something because they think it should work if they do'. Naraka does this well for what it is, but the properties of things in Naraka wouldn't be the same in Ashes, so some aspects of it would need to just not be added, even if they would definitely look cooler.

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Definitely correct, which is part of the problem with this whole flow.

BDO feels good (in certain encounters and in PvP) but is catered toward 'mowing down useless enemies in PvE' so it looks terrible.

Other games feel terrible but make it look like your movement and decisions are mattering when they don't, so they look great.

There's too much nuance to this, and so many different things that people value that aren't connected to each other but feel like they are.

But that's another good reason not to look to BDO too hard either. Everything in that video scares you quite rightly because everything you said about it is true. But notice what most of your points were about. Mob behaviour, not specifically anything else (I can't say why slicing left and right would be fun or not, for any given person, but the sad part is that it's pretty similar in total anyway).

Edit: It's probably not a derail to ask this, so... what do you want from mobs ?

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This comes from a poor implementation or a poor understanding of combos, or from exposure to only specific combo systems.

It does not have to work like that. Most of the time it does not. Optimal comes in only very seldom, and even then the situationality of it varies by enemy, teammates, available resources, health, positioning, etc.

So to someone like me, the thing you call 'combos' are short and much less interesting than my normal experience. I understand that your experience may differ.

I also agree that it's likely that at least 50% of people won't want fighting game mechanics in an MMO. But it is not necessary to 'prevent them from existing for the other 50%'.

So far, I haven't seen any indication that it is 'most people'.

While that is true, and any data gathered is still mostly just a representative sample, and compounding onto that, the fact that people who don't know how something works when it is done well, will obviously and reasonably have the reaction you're speaking of, the aim would be to improve that situation rather than doing the equivalent of throwing our hands up in the air and going 'well it doesn't work so don't do it'.

Hybrid Combat is Intrepid currently standing against that method. They believe it can be done. Lots of people originally told them 'just go back to Tab Target, this won't work'. A number of people still say that. But instead they choose to gather feedback, gather data, iterate, and try.

And that's what we're doing. Gather feedback, gather data, and try. The forums are quite familiar with discussing the way various combat systems work, we even delayed a bit because we were waiting for a revamp of Combat from Intrepid to talk about instead of speculating.

I'm not sure we'd even be able to agree on whether we got it, but we got something, so we're giving feedback now.

So here's an example of 'a combo' and 'agency', for 'a Tank'.

A lunging attack with a greatsword, a sideways movement and attack with that greatsword to get out of obvious melee range. Another lunging attack if the opponent is likely to stand still, or a more powerful smashing attack without advancing if the opponent is likely to charge in. Or decide to use an ability instead of either of these, and 'end the combo early' (because when we talk about combos in this case, we're talking about just strings of melee attacks).

A decision about if to use Javelin or Weapon Throw or Bulwark depending on the opponent, both their Archetypes and their playstyle/build.

You don't try to nab a Rogue with Javelin in this situation unless that Rogue didn't build for Evasion.

You don't use Bulwark on a Cleric that has just put down Hallowed Ground on their position to protect themselves if you don't need to, you use Javelin.

You don't use Javelin on a Cleric that put Hallowed Ground down on your position expecting/predicting Javelin, you use Bulwark.

You don't use either on a Bard that has some ability that weakens everyone in close range to them, or on a Fighter who has some powerful close range attack you are worried about. You Weapon Throw at them. In the Fighter's case you force them to use an ability to come to you and then maybe activate a defensive ability.

Then you're back to 'which of my movements should I use?' The advancing Fighter, maybe you can side-step their gap closer, then do your own quick standing attack when they advance, then another defensive ability. Or maybe their health is lower and you can make them worry by following your quick standing attack with another in the basic attack combo, preparing for one of your bigger combo finishers with more range and bigger damage so that they have to dodge and get out of range, but oops, you never used Javelin, since they came to you...

I don't know if you consider this level of play 'normal', 'fighting game mechanics', or 'not combos'. I just know that this is what I would prefer to play, if I were a Tank.